


Ice Palace

by flambydelrabies



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Snapshots, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, in which i have a lot of feelings about the Wilder family and Zelos' childhood, some violence and blood but not enough for a major archive warning, the zelloyd is kind of a background thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 07:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23847511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flambydelrabies/pseuds/flambydelrabies
Summary: Pedigree [ ped-i-gree ]: an ancestral line; line of descent; lineage; ancestry.A portrait of the Wilder family painted in rose-red - a generation of ghosts. An interpretation of Zelos' childhood and the Wilder family backstory.
Relationships: Lloyd Irving/Zelos Wilder, Seles Wilder & Zelos Wilder
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	Ice Palace

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the italicized passages are taken from Wikipedia or dictionary websites (don’t tell my professors) (you’ll be able to tell which ones), the rest are original prose. You will recognize some of this lore from Weltschmerz if you keep up with my longfic, and it’s because they are good ideas and I stand by them- after writing chapter 7, I wanted real bad to expand on my ideas for the Wilders’ backstory. This game/the Wilders just give me SO MANY FEELINGS OKAY, and I feel like Bamco really blew it and left me, here, to fill in all the blanks for you. Enjoy... if you can call anything about this fic enjoyment.

Mylene Caligula stood as tall as her dainty stature allowed her while she tried on her white gown for the first time, practicing through her teeth for the moment she were to say _'I do'_ until the day it rolled off her tongue like maggots falling from her mouth; 

_[there are few surviving sources about the reign of caligula, although he is described_

_as a noble and moderate emperor_ _during the first six months of his rule._ _after this,_ _the_

 _sources focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, presenting him as an insane tyrant,]_

the scriptures read of her ancestors but her frail heart was nothing like them, the same way she was nothing like the man she was forced to wed in lieu of the prince she dreamed of every night. She longed to keep her own name, _Mylene Caligula_ , as it was the _very last_ thing she could call her own after the oracle from Cruxis decided the _very rest_ of her life for her. 

How she wished she could set that same dress ablaze and go out with the same burning passion she felt in her own heart for a life lost; a funeral pyre for everything she could have been. 

**+**

A true, vile creature in repose, Mylene was far from the first woman the Chosen had slept with without love, but certainly the first he married in an ice palace with a glacial heart. There are some simple, albeit essential words he wouldn't even speak--

_["oh, chosen! will you at least tell me your name, of all things?"_

_"_ _please, just call me chosen; tell me, does the word not roll off the tongue and ring in your ears?"]_

even things simple as his very name. He existed with superficial charm and wit as sharp as a jagged dagger pointed at one's wrist, existing at one of two extremities at all times; some days, he spoke of the Goddess and the words she whispered in his ears, and others, he spoke nothing at all-- something certainly unusual for one as bewitching as the chosen himself. 

_Terminally crazy,_ everyone thought, but still so highly respected out of obligation, perhaps even _spite_. 

**+**

Mylene and the Chosen would not once look each other in the eye, and if they could so choose, they would separate to the ends of Tethe’alla never to speak again. 

Mistress was simply Mistress to Mylene. Her name did not matter the same way none of the Chosen's _other women_ ever crossed her mind. Mistress comes. Mistress goes. Mistress' eyes never meet hers. Mistress pretends she does not see Mylene and she can only pretend back. The Chosen could have one-hundred Mistresses for all she cared, and as far as she knew, maybe he did. 

_[i would say, perhaps, that such would cease to make me good enough for the man i am supposed to love,_

_but i am nothing more than a fool for staying faithful to one who thinks me less than the dirt he spits on]_

and now the fact that he loved this Mistress only made the femme fatale with a gaze pointed like knives marginally different than herself, who spent her days longing for a man for whose gentle, softened eyes would never lock with hers again. 

Mylene's prince was long-gone, the man who courted her when they were children by bringing flowers picked from the yard and giving clumsy pecks on the lips until they were old enough to do it right. She had not seen him in years now, three, perhaps five or even more, before the Church of Martel stole her from him to breed the blonde hair, thin features, and fragile heart back into the chosen lineage. By now, her heart had long since turned frigid and lost any sense of fragility it once had, and her newborn son donned the same rose- _red_ hair as his father. 

Even her genetics could not achieve the very things they were created to; she feels pathetic in every way she can, the same way her life’s trajectory spoke of

_[martyrdom; a display of feigned or exaggerated suffering to obtain sympathy or admiration]_

but the glaring difference is martyrs are admirable, and Mylene is but another self-sacrificing pawn.

**+**

After many moons trailed one-after-the-other in the star-stricken sky, Zelos was born, and Mylene Wilder had become Mylene Caligula once more in an entirely new fashion: she was no longer a remnant of her former self but of her ancestors instead, tyrannical with a heart of stone. Reborn a madwoman of her own right, if a tyrant could be birthed of a life discarded like the scraps of paper she wrote letters to her former lover on, then threw away out of contempt. The sight of her son, the spitting image of the man she hated, enraged Mylene to the point of seeing _red_. One day, that would be all she saw. She turns to Zelos, bright eyed and more full of life than he ever would be again, and simply says, 

_["i wish you had been a terminal disease," she breathes, "but after all, better you than me."]_

There are no bad children, except perhaps for Zelos and all his selfish, needy ways. He made everyone unhappy, especially her, and he was a burden, one she must bear alone; at least, those were Mylene’s cruel words, and the ones that echoed in that fragile child's mind for years to come. There are some things that never go away, like a mother's love, or even more than that, the lack of it in every tangible form. 

**+**

When Zelos cried to his father, he heard nothing in return: caught in his own worlds, as the Chosen ever was, waxing and waning in ways comparable only to the worlds of Sylvarant and Tethe’alla. _"Bipolar Disorder"_ was the name they gave it; not that Zelos knew what that meant, not that whatever they called it changed a single thing. But on paper, looking strictly at the diagnostic work from Meltokio's finest doctors in their snow-white coats--

_[--bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression,_

_is a mental disorder characterized by periods_ _of depression and abnormally_

 _elevated_ _moods._ _if the elevated mood is severe or associated with_ _psychosis,_ _it is_

 _called mania;_ _during mania, an individual behaves or feels abnormally energetic,_ _happy, or_

 _irritable._ _individuals often make impulsive decisions with little regard for the consequences._ _there is_

 _usually a reduced need for sleep during manic phases._ _during periods of depression, individuals may experience_

 _crying,_ _a negative outlook on life, and poor eye contact with others._ _the risk of suicide is high;_

 _over a period of 20 years 6% of people died by suicide--]_

\--and it only made sense for such an uncontrollable man to become so extreme that there was a medical diagnosis that screamed his mysterious name in silence. 

Mistress loved the highs and the lows; he would be on top of the world, the perfect man and a doting lover, then when he would sink to the bottom she would be the one to take care of him any way she could. Mylene shielded her son's eyes when he became like this, and even more so when Mistress would come around to pick up the broken pieces. Zelos hardly knew who she was beyond a maid who came to take care of Father when he drowned in a feeling known only to him, and that was the way Mylene intended to keep it. 

The Chosen and Mistress must have met through the Pope and the research labs while they were examining his Cruxis crystal, she thought. It was the only explanation that made sense as to why the person in Tethe’alla second only to the King himself could have come into contact with a lecherous witch of a half-elf, much less fallen in love with a cursed child on the way. By now, Mylene thinks of herself as nothing more than a laughing stock among the aristocracy; can't make even the most charming Chosen fall in love, can't keep a family together. By now, she snips the budding flowers off of rose bushes and spends her days crying, but only when she thinks no-one will see. 

**+**

Night fell fast for the Chosen and his melancholic mind, and Mistress arrived at the blue ice castle gripping the hand of a tiny, frail girl for the very first time, no more than the age of four at absolute _most_. Mylene pretends not to notice, affording the young child no more kindness or well-wishes than she bestowed upon her own son. It went beyond not liking children; it was simply that she did not like anyone at all, much less any and all glaring reminders of her failed destiny.

 _“Who is she?”_ Zelos asks as hushed whispers ensue throughout the mansion. _“Your half-sister, master Zelos,”_ Sebastian speaks with as little budding emotion as he ever showed. The perfect butler, created only to serve, a blank slate unlike any other.

A child born of forbidden love without marriage, in stark contrast to his own descent of two who wed but cannot bear to look each other in the eyes. And thus, the

_[pedigree (ped-i-gree); an ancestral line; line of descent; lineage; ancestry]_

splits directly down the middle with no remorse, much as all the hearts the Chosen snaps in half of his own selfish volition, including Mylene’s and even his very own. Gazing upon the girl before him with rose- _red_ hair and eyes that spoke of nothing more than naive innocence, Zelos in all of his weariness only prays that their Father doesn’t break her heart too.

 _“You’re my brother, right?”_ she says with far too a cheerful of a demeanor to see their father for the last time on his very deathbed. If only she understood the reality of the being the chosen, and if only either of them understood the concept of death at all.

_[‘i heard the chosen committed suicide’ / ‘i heard the life of the chosen would drive anyone to’]_

**+**

The day Zelos became thrust directly into his Father’s world was the day his body was found in the garden, droplets of sun-showers diluting the crimson viscera that dripped from the Chosen’s wrist to the same rose- _red_ shade that matched his messy hair. Zelos is lured to the garden with the promise of the prettiest butterflies that always dance across the sky after the rain leaves, only to chase a beautiful monarch or to chase the

_[butterfly effect; the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change_

_in one state of a system_ _can result in large differences in a later state]_

directly to the dagger that protruded 

from his father’s 

_wrist._

_“Daddy?”_ he speaks, shaking the carrion body that once stood tall and charming, wondering why, after all the times he laid in bed for weeks, he simply wouldn’t wake up this time.

 _“Oh, what a bother,”_ Mylene speaks with no emotion but pity wringing from the base of her throat. _“Sebastian, please begin cleaning up the blood.”_

In short succession the priests remove the body that rotted in the rain, and every butler and servant of the palace finds themselves scrubbing blood from the labyrinth of stonework in the garden to no avail. By the time they finish, a subtle outline in the shade of crimson _red_ is still visible where the Chosen’s wrist once lay, perhaps even if only to Zelos, who saw ghosts of his Father everywhere he went.

 _“Why isn’t daddy waking up?”_ he asked; a maid with a gentle voice coos back, _“He was sleeping, dearie”_ , the only way she could comfort a pitiful child whose father had just killed himself. Instead, Mylene’s voice booms over both of them in dual indignation and pure satisfaction:

 _“No, he’s dead.”_ There was no need for her to mince words, or even to cut them into small, digestible sizes for the sake of her seven-year-old son. Her loveless groom was about to be buried six feet under the earth, and that was all she had ever wanted. Lying awake with open arms, Zelos drifts off to

_[sleep did not come easily to him that night, as all he could think was that maybe, much like his father,_ _he_

_would cease to wake up the next morning--_ _for the first time in his life, that possibility did not_

_frighten him,_ _but instead beckoned for him to come closer and closer and]_

the next morning, his eyes flutter to open, just as the butterflies that visit the garden do after a gentle sunshower, and all he can think of is tearing their wings off the same way Mylene tore off his. 

Perhaps somewhere in him, there was a tyrant, too.

**+**

_“I loved Dad, even if he didn’t love me,”_ Seles says as he stands next to her brother and grips his tender hand-- _“I loved him too, sister, even if I never knew him and he never knew me.”_ It rained the day of the funeral the same way it rained the day of his death. The same way it was the first and the last time Zelos stopped every tear in that threatened to fall from his eyes, it was the first and the last time the siblings were ever truly genuine with each other;

_[it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine_

_it's fine_ _it's fine it's fine_ _it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine]_

but was it, and had it ever been? 

Zelos spends his days with this question wrung heavy throughout his mind. There was no correct answer. There were no answers at all.

**+**

_Aslan Wilder  
_

_Chosen of Tethe’alla XVI  
_

_Descended into peace surrounded  
_

_by the love of his family  
_

_Survived by Wife, Mylene Wilder,_

_and Son, Zelos Wilder_

_MCMLXXI - MMIII_

**+**

The day the King announced the Chosen’s death, Zelos had weaved his mind through the unfamiliar word _‘suicide’_ like a toy around his little finger, spiraling down his arm until it makes a home in his wrist. Daddy wanted to die, and sometimes when you love people there are things you can never stop, even when you want to, even when it’s all you can think about to the point of madness, almost like the concepts of love and loss they write songs and poetry about--

_[things and events only possess meaning because we ascribe it to them; even one of the most powerful men in tethe’alla_

_covered in his own blood_ _that splashes in his wake like wings can be made sweet through the perfect_

_rose-_ red _tinted glasses. anything can be beautiful; perhaps even suicide,_ _should one_

 _romanticize_ _it_ _enough_ _that_ _beauty can be found at all]_

before his father died the people of Tethe’alla had never thought a more worthless chosen could be picked as the patriarch of their world-- whether this was really the truth or simply distorted thoughts like stark ripples through muddied water in Zelos’ unquiet mind was murky at best, much as the rest of his reflection in the mirror upto nature.

At age ten he meets his foreordained marriage partner the way his parents once did: Princess Hilda, one day to be queen of the castle to match his icy heart, much like his parents, only to breed children with blonde hair, thin features, and frail hearts the way his very lineage failed to provide

_[--kit-ligand is a cytokine that binds to the c-kit receptor (cd117)--_

_this cytokine plays an important role in hematopoiesis, or formation of blood cells, and melanogenesis, creation of--]_

beautiful, flowing blonde hair in the image of the Goddess herself, much unlike the Wilder’s locks of blood _red_. Fitting for none other than a generation of ghosts.

**+**

The title of Chosen is passed to Zelos over his Father’s dead body, but much unlike his Father he keeps his birth name over his heart because it is the only thing he has left to call his own. Rarely did he leave his house unaccompanied in his early years as fledgling chosen, as now was perfect for one with a glacial heart degrees even colder than his own to end the mana lineage. Little did each assassin know of his half-sister who came to his home once a week while their mothers never spoke, and the 

_[half-innocent half-honest half-children half-siblings]_

played like children for the first and last time before the body count began.

The guards tested his food for poison, defended from onslaughts of arrows, shielded him from vicious assault; he counts the bodies on one hand as they come

 _[one, two, three, four, five--]_

there is no reason to trust, no reason to get attached, because the good ones die and the bad ones leave

_[six seven eight]_

but he never forgot the day the number of bodies in his wake matched his very age, and it took more than two hands to count the numbers that only kept rising

_[nineteneleventwelve]_

_“What makes me worth more than the corpses of those sworn to protect me?”_ he asks, waiting for another victim of a failed attempt at poisoning to be dragged from his sight. If his life truly was as worthless as Mylene had beat into his fragile preteen mind, then why did he get to live, while they get to die?

What _is_ it that makes his life _worth something?_

**+**

After the Chosen’s untimely death Mistress stopped returning to the manor for anything save for Seles and her brother’s quick visits and short playdates. Perhaps such a half-elven wretch did have a heart after all-- or, at the very least, something _red_ that beats in her chest and ebbs blood through her veins; more than could be said of Mylene by now, whose only pleasures come from destroying anything beautiful she could wring her fingers around.

One day, much to Mylene’s great pleasure, Mistress stopped coming at all. No-one questioned it, save for Zelos, who wanted only to see the one person who treated him like a

_[human being, when you can be more than that, Seles?” she asks her daughter,_ _who_ _was_

_hardly old enough to understand the true depth to Mistress’ question;_ _“Why be_

_a human being when you could be the Chosen instead?”_ _her_ _words_

_are empty and hollow,_ _just like the look in her eyes when she]_

takes the life of the one she hates, as Mylene’s frail body and hardened heart are caught in the crossfire of magic meant for a defenseless boy barely above the age of twelve. The snow splashed with the stain of _red_ in the gut-wrenching fashion Zelos had seen before trickling from his father’s wrist, but this time, it stained every inch of his body, the metallic stench retching through his nostrils in ways it never had before, and she’s not moving,

_[maybe she’s sleeping, but mommy is the one who always wakes up;_

_pick the very maggots off her skin like the pearl necklace sitting lifelessly around her neck--_

_the very same maggots that never ceased to crawl from her decaying mouth the day she wed the man she despised]_

and Zelos lives in an ice palace of his own now, surrounded by butlers and servants without a trace of love - not that he ever felt it at all.

After all, he should 

_never_

_have_

_been_

_born._

**+**

_Mylene Wilder, nee Caligula_

_Wife of Chosen of Tethe’alla XVI_

_Taken from this world far too soon,_

_Preceded by Husband Aslan Wilder,_

_Survived by Son Zelos Wilder_

_MCMLXXIV - MMVII_

**+**

Perhaps Seles truly would have been a better chosen instead of someone so weak; Zelos spent every night dreaming of his parents’ rotting bodies and how the world would have been so much of a better place without him in it. The chosen system could only be the culprit, beyond him, beyond his parents, beyond anything else; only something such as this could create a cursed child hated even by his parents, who wed only of obligation rather than love. Seles, at least, was a child born of something tangible, something as undeniable of two people who chose each other of their own free will;

_[zēlus (zēlī); second declension - zeal, emulation; jealousy]_

Zelos’ mere name spoke of two people who wished they could have been anyone else and passed such a gift of 

_[wishingwaitingwanting]_

to their only son. The day that Mistress was to be executed, Zelos stands with his hands gracelessly at his sides and places a gem in his half-sister’s hands; yet another thing he hated that reflected that same damned shade of crimson _red_ . Finally, the Cruxis crystal that was passed to him from Father was out of his hands, and now in a pair that needed it more than he needed the reminders that his life was _worthless_.

 _“This is a symbol of my trust, little sis,”_ he says as he balls her hand into a fist around the accursed crystal. She cries, and he can’t tell if it’s out of happiness, sadness, or fear, but _really, truly, madly, and deeply,_ it was because this was the first and last time he was completely vulnerable around her.

_[emulation (emyəˈlāshən); effort to match or surpass a person, typically by imitation]_

**+**

When asked moments before her execution if she felt a shred of remorse for her ruthless murder of the Chosen’s widow, Mistress answers ‘no’ before her body ignites in flames;

_[when staring death in you face you learn very quickly that your life does not flash_

_before_ _your_ _eyes,_ _nor do you see a burning glow until it engulfs your vision with all its might;_ _instead,_

 _dying is_ _comparable_ _to thick,_ _lace curtains being placed over your body one after the other,_ _or perhaps drowning,_

_for_ _a more literal metaphor--_ _it exists as a feeling of slipping in and out like a feedback loop that simply cuts off in_ _abrupt_ _fashion;_

_death then feels like nothing]_

Perhaps the best way to die is as Mistress did, with no regrets.

**+**

When Zelos was sixteen years old he was so, so _angry_.

His parents had long since become ghosts and now he lived on as a shell of anything he could have been; he finally understands why Mylene hated him, and it was for the same reason he hated himself: he was worth nothing more than a title he so hated to everyone around him, and his entire life was decided for him in ways he despised. He looks at Princess Hilda and thinks about how he wants to crawl out of his skin being trapped in a loveless marriage like that of his parents, he thinks of all the bodyguards who died to protect him until he was old enough to protect himself, and for the first time in his life, he begins to understand why his father did what he did, because

_[suicide is one of the most selfish ways to die but only if the thought of it has never crossed your mind;_

_the only ones who die young by their own hands are those with pretty faces and ugly minds, and]_

if he were to die, Seles would become the Chosen, and perhaps then she wouldn’t have to suffer. If she hated him anyways, then any sort of self-immolation would be nothing short of a blessing to her.

When his Father died, Zelos kept the very dagger that protruded from his wrist; as he clutched it between the tips of his fingers, he thinks of the butterflies that fluttered through the garden with their golden shimmer and the juxtaposition of their wings kissing his Father’s rotting body. It was the same kind of visceral as the maggots that crawled from Mylene’s mouth when she whispered _‘you should never have been born’_ \-- the moment he thinks of her dying words is the moment he presses the dagger to pale wrist and pushes down against the coils of lavender veins below, and

 _[perhaps he should have aimed for the heart instead, or between the eyes]_

as he sits watching the blood pool beneath him, he never once feels the slightest bit faint or unsteady to the point where he considers digging deeper, wondering if that would make him more or less foolish than his father. Instead, he drops the dagger to the floor, allowing it to fracture as it hits the ground before taking its rightful place among his blood, the colour of crimson _red_. Perhaps that was the most foolish decision of all.

 _“Sebastian,”_ he calls without a shred of emotion in his voice. _“Bandage me, please.”_ His butler arrives in hasty fashion with gauze and saline in hand; Zelos flinches at each sensation of the sting of a fresh wound. How silly, considering he did this to himself-- _“I believe that you need a doctor, Young Master,”_ Sebastian replies, no stranger to treating the chosen’s reckless injuries by now. _“Just keep bandaging,”_ he says in response, short and cutting, much like the slit on his wrist.

It would be far from the last time he ran away but it was the first that left him with an incision on his pale, ice-cold arm. Perhaps he would have bled to his demise if he weren’t already dead.

At sixteen years old, he was so very _angry_ , and so very _right_. 

**+**

The Abbey becomes a prison, caging the only living soul left to carry on the mana lineage now that the half-siblings were both orphans; _‘it’s for your health’_ , the Church said, but they all knew it was to keep her a bird in an ice cage, in stark contrast to the ice palace in which Zelos spent his days-- one Seles only knew through their brief playdates and frigid hearts. Zelos’ visits began to dwindle in number the same way fewer and fewer words began to escape her lips during each one. He only thinks it’s because

_[she hates me; she hates me; she wishes i were dead-- oh, if only i had succeeded that day in the same_

_way our_ _father did,_ _so as to never once burden her again like a bird clipped at the wings]_

and instead, he chose to write to her, with each letter guarding both of their hearts, keeping each other at arms’ distance so their fingers barely touched; not too close, but further than he ever thought they would be after their stories of survival as children. Further than he wanted to be, and as he jots the words

_[seles, just wanted to let you know i’m thinking about you / you’re on my mind /_

_i’ll come visit you one day /_ _just write me back and let me know / you’re my half-sister /_

_i love you /_ _i miss you /_ _endless meaningless pleasantries drag on from here_

_(does he mean them or not?)_ _(oh goddess, not even he knows anymore)]_

he never once receives a letter in return, but each one piles in Seles’ room and she holds them over her heart, some to be opened and some never to see the light of day; every time the word _‘sister’_ is prefaced by _‘half’_ it is nothing more than a glaring reminder that both siblings are half Jack with a divergent Jill split directly down the pedigree.

**+**

Green was a colour rarely spoken of by the Wilders; instead, it was always _red_. But then there was green, the

_[colour of balance, growth, impatience, cowardice, and above all, envy]_

just like the mere definition of Zelos’ name; he longed for a world free of the chains of his title, the way his half-sister longed to be free of the imprisonment she called home. Both of them were envious of each other for the very things they considered their own frozen castles;

if one were to vivisect the anatomical venus, they would find her veins to be the colour of emeralds.

**+**

By the time Zelos turns nineteen he has moved beyond childlike fatalism, instead joining the ranks of logic and critical thought. Perhaps instead of death, he could find himself stripped of the six letters that _[c]_ ontrolled _[h]_ is life and pass the title to his half-sister instead by _[o]_ ther mean _[s]_ that did not _[e]_ nd in u _[n]_ timely demise. The Church promised to put him in touch with those who could arrange such, though their names, titles, and masks were shrouded in whispers and secrecy; he would take advice from the Fool at this point if it meant bringing him somewhere other than _here._

Still, their mystery does not strike terror upon the chosen; in fact, he invited the experience, because the feeling of fear had proven unfamiliar to him by now. He flirts with death the same way he flirts with any warm body who chooses to give him the time of day, except this time he _seeks_ the frigid glaciers threatening to take him like a knife to the wrist-- the day the emissary shows at his door, he cries

_[stranger, fill this hole in me-- one filled only a lifetime of dashed hopes, empty promises, and broken dreams]_

and Kratos speaks in reply _“If you wish to be released from your title, Chosen, there is such a way;”_ the angel with azure wings' auburn hair hangs as lifelessly as the gaze in his eyes, a sense of 

_[weltschmerz (veltˌshmerts); a feeling of melancholy and world-weariness]_

hanging over his head like a looming cloud of darkness. Zelos is nothing less than smug, because he isn’t afraid yet, and right now, that feeling of fear coursing through his veins is all he longs for. _“What’s the catch?”_ he asks in return, and his face is sullied beyond the mask he only dropped in fragile moments like these.

 _“You can join Cruxis and work with us to facilitate the revival of Martel. Should this task be completed, you will be stripped of the title of Chosen,”_ and a _deal_ is a _deal_ is a _deal,_ and a _deal_ has never looked so sweet.

**+**

Mylene Wilder died on the twenty-fifth day in the twelfth month of the Aselian calendar, and Mylene Caligula long before so; her murder took place on Christmas day, as some would call it, but to Zelos, all it meant was the smell of blood came back until he scrubbed his skin raw trying in vain to remove it. All that would happen in the end was the same shade of _red_ blistered against his skin that he saw the day the maggots left Mylene’s mouth for good.

Instead, on the anniversary, death date, day of mourning, day of martyrdom, whatever one chose to call it,

_[he tended to alternate between the few, because it never mattered to him;_

_the only thing that mattered was running away in the same way he always did, and goddess,_

_was he ever an expert at it at this very moment as the snow turns white and then to_ red _]_

he chose to begin vacationing as far from Meltokio as he possibly could. He generally ended up in Altamira, and the feeling of skin against skin was enough to distract from the ice palace that caged his heart. Sometimes the women he slept with didn’t know his name and referred to him only as ‘chosen’, ever reminiscent of his Father who chose to go by that title alone. Despite his Father’s birth name, _Aslan_ , speaking of fierce bravery and the heart of a lion, somehow, it was more important to him to accept his fate until it consumed him down to his very name, heart, and identity.

Zelos could not imagine something so foolish-- nearly as foolish as naming a child after one’s own emulation, zeal, and jealousy.

**+**

It is now the first time Zelos has come to visit his half-sister in months, and he comes with a bouquet of sunflowers in his hands-- sunflowers, for loyalty and longevity; forever the poet, always looking for meaning wherever he could find it, just like

_[his entire life, he searched for some kind of explanation about why he is the way he is, why him, why anything,_

_why everything,_ _so he searches for meaning in the stars and divination and symbolism_

_and a goddess he doesn’t believe in and]_

then he knocks on the door of the Abbey, and he stands in silence save for the echoes rushing down to the wooden frame. At this point, he’s surprised that she answers at all, much less with a

_[half-smile for a half-truth on a half-sister]_

strewn across her face. _“Do you like ‘em? They’re for your birthday,”_ he extends his arm. She smiles, then frowns in a childlike contradiction. _“You know I only like the_ red _ones,”_ she says in return, but takes the flowers from his hands anyways.

He leaves, and once he is out of eyesight and earshot she places them over her bed. It was the first and the last time they both faked it so well and so completely _in tune_ with one another.

**+**

Mithos grips him by the chin, jerking Zelos’ jawline inches away from his snarling face; such a look of contempt hardly suited a frail boy in his mid-teens. Hardly befitting of the leader of Cruxis, he thought, until the half-elf barks _“Kratos, I do believe he could be of use to us,”_ and struck Zelos’ face away.

 _“Do you miss believing in the Goddess, Chosen?”_ he asks, knowing as well as Zelos did that there was no Goddess watching over the world. The boy with the rose- _red_ hair smirks poison; _“Same damn way I miss Santa Claus,”_ he spits like venom pooling beneath his teeth. Every time Mithos hissed the word _‘Chosen’_ it rolls off the tongue and rings in Zelos' ears.

 _“Anyone working as a member of our organization must be trained to fight,”_ Kratos says, weary as he always was and gripping a blade with Zelos’ name

_[jealousy; effort to match or surpass a person, typically by imitation]_

written on it as much as it could without saying a single word. The ice-hearted seraphim raises his sword, pointing it at the artery in Zelos’ slender neck-- it was the perfect size to press a blade against, or perhaps grasp between two hands; _“Now that you have a weapon of your own, defend yourself, if you can, Chosen one.”_

For the first time since he began flirting with death so many years ago, the fear creeps in once more as Kratos approaches with eyes that could

_[kill me the way i tried and failed to kill myself, i suppose; should i die here then at least i died with fear in my eyes for the first time_ _since_

_seeing my mother splayed on the ground, ripped open but never more like the letters i leave my half-sister and]_

as the seraphim advances, the scar on Zelos' arm is all the more visible in the dim fluorescence of Welgaia; sabre in hand, Kratos speaks _"clearly, you do not fear death, chosen; so what is it that makes you afraid now?"_ before he turns to the opposite arm and drags a newfound scar from his blade to match the one Zelos inflicted upon himself.

The terror is gone now as he grips his fresh wound, thinking of how he was one step closer to transferring his title to one who wanted it more than he did; perhaps the feeling of fear and dread is born from the anticipation rather than the pain itself. He knows pain the same way he knows the first of the two scars that stretch across his wrists, but it was waiting for it to happen that drove him to the brink of madness.

**+**

In spite of a lifetime of deceit Zelos had never lied as much as he did upon joining forces with the _absolute buffoons_ from Sylvarant, foolish enough to think there was a way to save the two worlds after all. Such naivety was laughable, or perhaps

_[22 years or 1,147 weeks or 8,030 days or 192,720 hours or 11,563,200 minutes-- he always was good at math--]_

worth of small tragedies were enough to leave him jaded so that he could only see Cruxis’ ways. Siding with the strongest is the only way to survive in a world that wants you dead by the mere principle of the title hovering malevolently over your head like a ticking bomb. Yet, somehow, here he was, helping the _weaker side_ , perhaps if only because he was enchanted by the idealist who thought he could change anything at all.

If only that were enough to save him from his fate as chosen. Joining the two worlds won’t change the only thing that races through his mind the same way he can only imagine his Father’s spun in circles in the throes of his manias: ridding Tethe’alla of a worthless chosen such as himself, and finally making his half-sister happy for the first and last time since they were children.

**+**

The Abbey had become far more a cage of single-sided glass than a cage of ice, for Seles could see out, but none could see in; she stops and asks herself one day

_[oh, but why does the bird in the glass cage sing? when does it cease to be trapped behind invisible bars?_

_oh, when you love it, of course - and until then it stays within its prison with wings broken so as not to fly]_

and it ceases to the first time in eons her half-brother arrives at her prison, followed by people she had never seen before, whether they be friends, enemies, allies, or something in between. It wouldn't be the first time someone only hung around him for their own person gain and she knew

 _[it would hardly be the last such is the cruel fate of the chosen who fucks but never loves]_

but he loved one person, whose name and face matched hers like a pedigree split in

 _[half jack with two different jills]_

and by the time he enters her door there is nothing left to

 _[say do cry or burn]_

the same way his heart was ravaged with the cruelest flames when he looked at her,

mourning a life lost the same way his was and Mylene's was and their father's was and

the

whole

system 

could go

straight to

Niflheim for

all that he

cared

of it

just as Zelos knew he would be going there the very day he died. But today, he comes with a purpose, intending to be 

_[inandoutinandoutinandout]_

and he can only hope that the fact he hadn't visited in over a year would be swept under the rug much like the rest of his sins always were to anyone but her. 

_“Do you still have my Cruxis crystal?”_ he asks, an artificial smile never faltering in spite of the looks of dread and pestilence that cross her face. _“Ah, the Cruxis crystal that rightfully belongs to my half-brother, the chosen,”_ she speaks in tune with the murmur in her heartbeat, the same tiny skipping of beats that somehow justified a life in a cage. 

_"I'm well-liked, aren't I?"_ he speaks, feeling the warmth of the crystal against his fingers that he had discarded so long ago--

Perhaps the glass cage Seles lived in the confines of wasn't so different from the ice palace Zelos spent his whole life in, staring longingly at jagged daggers and freezing even further. 

**+**

The night before the Tower, Lloyd chose him, of all people; he wonders what Colette would say if she knew that Lloyd picked him over her the very day before he was to betray everyone the same way his bloodline predicted. After all, as their hearts waltz in tune with the falling snow in the city of ice, he thinks it is perhaps the only good memory of snow he's ever made, only to remember the best he can do is break Lloyd's heart directly in two. 

That night, he tells tales of the flawed chosen system and the even more flawed chosen whose blood weeps through his veins, and the flutter in his stomach takes him nowhere but grazing against Lloyd's lips and

_[STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT_

_MONSTERS LIKE ME DON'T FALL IN_ _LOVE_ _WITH_ _A_ _NGELS LIKE YOU_

_I WILL BREAK YOUR HEART_

_I WILL SNAP IT IN TWO]_

then as he returns to his room, he fumbles the crystal and a note into Lloyd's pocket with shaky, panicked hands as a small assurance that 

_[i still trust you, even though every reason screams that I shouldn't and--]_

even still, Lloyd's name rang heavy on his lips the same way he dragged his fingers and thought of them pressing against his once more; he had been lost in those ember eyes the way he was lost in the gentle flicker of their tongues. How cruel a tyrant he must be; the Caligula blood within him has shown its true shade of _red_ for him to kiss someone and betray them the very next day.

_[i only want your love if you know at the very same time that I am a true, vile creature;_

_love me anyways, or don’t love me at all-- don’t love me, don’t love me, don’t love me, he begs;_

_i can’t handle it, for I am no more than a terminal disease]_

the words sat on the tip of his tongue weighing it down like lead, never to be spoken into existence out of the terror of fear itself-- a feeling he had become intimately familiar with once more since meeting the idealist with the golden eyes. He feels the fear and dreads it in anticipation of the hurt, and the love he feels is like swallowing shards of a mirror into a stomach full of sand. 

**+**

Aionis was a fine little stone, a gem the size of a marble in the same way a Cruxis crystal is a parasite the size of a coin; he racks his brain for where Cruxis may have kept it, because right now, that's all he needs so that he may look Lloyd in the eyes once more--

_[perhaps some people are born to be traitors the same way some descended from tyrants are destined to follow in their paths;_

_then, what does that make one descended from traitors and tyrants alike? something sinister or merely cowardly?_

_can there ever be a halfway point for one as much a contradiction as him?]_

he asks himself in a daze until his head is jerked back by its rose- _red_ hair before smashing to the ground;

 _“You, Chosen, whose sight has always made me sick,”_ Mithos spits to the floor in tune with Zelos spitting blood in his least favourite shade of _red_ , thinking unto to his favourite instead: _red,_ the colour Lloyd donned in all his idealistic, bewitching sincerity; _red_ , like the tiny string of fate that stretched between their little fingers and stopped around his neck. But right now, in this moment, it was _red_ like the blood his father was left to rot in, or the _red_ that stained his clothes and his hair after his mother’s murder; the

_[color of fire and blood, energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination, passion, desire, and love]_

he tries so hard to stop the blood the same way we all do when we choose to live instead of die--

The stain of _red_ , the combination of viscera and tenderness in perfect coalescence, but the difference is that this time, the blood washes away for the first time in his life, because it wasn't born of fear or running away. Instead, the shade of crimson red that seeped from his mouth with every blow Mithos inflicts was born of fighting back. 

_“Call me whatever you like,”_ he says as he wipes away the blood; _“for the first time in my life I believe in something, and his name is Lloyd.”_

**+**

Zelos had forsaken them and that miserable fact was unforgivable, but is one still a traitor when they swoop in like a dishonoured knight in shining armor and save the very people they betrayed? Does their intention at the beginning matter more than the end results, even when they show up to the final battle caked in their own blood? 

_[this time, the blood is realer than it ever had been even when his father slit his wrists or his mother stained the snow_

_with the shade of_ red _,_ _because the blood was his own and shed for a noble cause for once in his miserable]_

life had new meaning now that the chosen system had been abolished and a new world created in the image of prosperity. He had spent so many years caught in Cruxis' web of cunning treachery that he neglected to realize until the very end that following Lloyd's ideals would get him exactly what he wanted anyway: a life without the title he despised, where he could live a life for himself alone. Only now, he doesn't want to live alone;

_[my sister hates me, you know-- if i could do anything it would be to make things right but my heart is_

_an ice palace_ _that has only just began to melt at the hands of the boy that i hold in my own;_

 _everything waxes and wanes like my father's moods but blood is forever and]_

_"Go, speak to her;"_ Lloyd says, gripping the hand of the no-longer-chosen tighter within his own. _"You're not the chosen anymore, so there's nothing to fight about, right?"_

Somehow, he always knew what to say, even when Zelos didn't-- a gift in its own right. 

**+**

_"I never wanted to be the chosen,"_ the words roll off the tip of her tongue like cocoons that spring into butterflies the moment they leave her mouth. Each invisible butterfly flutters through the bars of her ice cage and dances across his vision, like the monarchs that swarmed their father's corpse. Somehow, the pathetic fallacy couldn't have been more fitting. 

He frowns, and he swears he can feel _red_ dripping from the scars on his wrists-- one born of his own desire to run away, and the other a permanent mark of Cruxis left behind to symbolize being a

_[traitor (trādər); a person who betrays]_

his own heart. He muses over all the tender things he feels and ruminates on the same two words over and over again;

 _[traitor tyrant traitor tyrant traitor tyrant traitor tyrant traitor tyrant traitor tyrant]_

until he realizes that perhaps the pedigree means nothing. 

_"Why don't we start over, little sister?"_ he asks, extending a hand to the girl with fire in her eyes until she takes his palm in hers. It was the first of many times they would ever be honest with each other the same way it was the first time since their mothers' deaths they had looked each other in the eyes.

_“Come live with me; we’ll make a life of our own for the first time-- both of us, together.”_

The keys to Seles' binds were hidden in his blue ice castle all along, and the manor was no longer an ice palace in the same way Seles' heart no longer resided in a glass cage. 

Now that the siblings were together and _happy_ in longer than either of them could begin to remember, it was like coming home for the very first time. 

Perhaps, 

after all they had 

been through, 

it was. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to the Zelloyd discord server for both inspiring and encouraging me to take this on.


End file.
